...Because the RaceFail09 discusssion is for everyone

[slashpine]

OK, breaking a long LJ silence, the reasons for which I won't go into. I'll blame credit bethbethbeth for making me think about those reasons. Not that she asked, or should care. *g* It was just something that came up in the course of another conversation - the reasons I prefer to be on IJ, when I'm online these days at all. Such a pesky nuisance, RL

Comments

[p_zeitgeist]

Thanks for linking this. Since I avoid television except during football season, I would never have been aware of it if you hadn't.

It strikes me that beyond the obvious outrageousness of this ad, there might be a useful lesson here about how fundamental and pervasive racism still is, and the degree to which it poisons our discourse without anyone being fully aware of it. There's a poster over in the comments at Media Assassin who's clearly full of fail, going on about how we PC Police would complain if it were a black mannequin grabbing the dress off a white mannequin too -- and while he's wrong in the specific point he's making, there's a way in which he's right: there is no acceptable way to make this commercial.

It *would* be offensive for a black male to be grabbing the dress off a white female, for all the horrible and obvious reasons. It would be offensive for the black male to strip the dress off the black female, because that would -- duh -- play into creepy racist stereotypes about violence and primitive peoples. It would be offensive for the white male to strip the dress off the white female, because the way the commercial is written there'd still be the black male ogling the white female (if the white one is presented as married to the white man) or the black man unable to protect his wife (if the white mannequin is married to the black man). And if you take out all the mannequins of color, that's problematic for its own obvious reasons.

That is, because of the complexity and layered qualities of racism, you can't make this commercial at all.* And because of the clarity with which the issues are presented here, it might make a nice case study for the clueless.

*Which in a way might be just as well, inasmuch as the sexual violence aspects suggest it shouldn't be made anyway. But of course, that's another issue.

[slashpine]

AH! You lay that out so beautifully! YES. There is *no* acceptable way to make this commercial.

Did you meaning that both ways? There's also no acceptable way to make this *commercial*. It fails, whether taken as video art/performance, or as a money-making act of advertising.

I wish you would post that at Media Assassin. I think Allen would love it!

And yes - it's a *wonderful* (academically speaking) case study. I zamzar'd a copy for future use, because as you note, there are both race and gender issues here, the whole commodification trope, and the possibility of exploring family, and children's involvement, as well!

It has perfect awfulness.